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๐ Naturally-Occurring Nuclear Reactors
A fossil natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. This can be examined by analysis of isotope ratios. The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kazuo Kuroda. The phenomenon was discovered in 1972 in Oklo, Gabon by French physicist Francis Perrin under conditions very similar to what was predicted.
Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions are thought to have taken place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging probably less than 100 kW of thermal power during that time.
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- "Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor" | 2022-05-07 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor" | 2020-10-10 | 49 Upvotes 8 Comments
- "Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor" | 2019-07-03 | 60 Upvotes 16 Comments
- "Natural nuclear fission reactor" | 2018-07-08 | 71 Upvotes 18 Comments
- "Natural nuclear fission reactor" | 2009-11-04 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Trout Tickling
Trout tickling is the art of rubbing the underbelly of a trout with fingers. If done properly, the trout will go into a trance after a minute or so, and can then easily be thrown onto the nearest bit of dry land.
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- "Trout Tickling" | 2018-07-31 | 66 Upvotes 25 Comments
- "Trout tickling" | 2015-11-08 | 38 Upvotes 15 Comments
๐ Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna
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- "Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna" | 2024-07-04 | 24 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Uncleftish Beholding
"Uncleftish Beholding" (1989) is a short text by Poul Anderson designed to illustrate what English might look like without its large number of loanwords from languages such as French, Greek, and Latin. Written in a form of "Anglish," the work explains atomic theory using Germanic words almost exclusively and coining new words when necessary; many of these new words have cognates in modern German, an important scientific language in its own right. The title phrase uncleftish beholding calques "atomic theory."
To illustrate, the text begins:
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
It goes on to define firststuffs (chemical elements), such as waterstuff (hydrogen), sourstuff (oxygen), and ymirstuff (uranium), as well as bulkbits (molecules), bindings (compounds), and several other terms important to uncleftish worldken (atomic science). Wasserstoff and Sauerstoff are the modern German words for hydrogen and oxygen, and in Dutch the modern equivalents are waterstof and zuurstof. Sunstuff refers to helium, which derives from แผฅฮปฮนฮฟฯ, the Ancient Greek word for "sun." Ymirstuff references Ymir, a giant in Norse mythology similar to Uranus in Greek mythology.
The vocabulary used in Uncleftish Beholding does not completely derive from Anglo-Saxon. Around, from Old French reond (Modern French rond), completely displaced Old English ymbe (cognate to German um) and left no "native" English word for this concept. The text also contains the French-derived words rest, ordinary and sort.
The text gained increased exposure and popularity after being circulated around the Internet, and has served as inspiration for some inventors of Germanic English conlangs. Douglas Hofstadter, in discussing the piece in his book Le Ton beau de Marot, jocularly refers to the use of only Germanic roots for scientific pieces as "Ander-Saxon."
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- "Uncleftish Beholding" | 2019-02-19 | 188 Upvotes 76 Comments
๐ Zero-Rupee Note
A zero-rupee note is a banknote imitation issued in India as a means of helping to fight systemic political corruption. The notes are "paid" in protest by angry citizens to government functionaries who solicit bribes in return for services which are supposed to be free. Zero-rupee notes, which are made to resemble the old 50-rupee banknote of India, are the creation of a non-governmental organization known as 5th Pillar which has, since their inception in 2007, distributed over 2.5 million notes as of August 2014. The notes remain in current use and thousands of notes are distributed every month.
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- "Zero-Rupee Note" | 2024-02-25 | 160 Upvotes 76 Comments
๐ Sisu
Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English.
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- "Sisu" | 2022-03-02 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches
The Casio F-91W is a digital watch manufactured by Japanese electronics company Casio. Introduced in 1989, it is popular for its low price and long battery life. Annual production is 3 million units per year.
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- "List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches" | 2010-05-15 | 26 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Vital Wikipedia Articles
Vital articles are lists of subjects for which the English Wikipedia should have corresponding featured-class articles. They serve as centralized watchlists to track the status of Wikipedia's most important articles. The very most important articles are in Level 1.
This page constitutes Level 3 of the vital articles list and includes approximately 1,000 articles. All articles from higher levels are also included in lower levels. For example, all 100 subjects on the Level 2 list (shown on this page in bold font) are included here in Level 3. And the Level 2 list also includes the 10 subjects on Level 1 (shown on this page in bold italics). A larger Level 4 list of 10,000 articles also exists, and a Level 5 list of 50,000 articles is in the process of being created.
Articles are labelled as:
These symbols and article counts are updated daily by User:cewbot.
- The bot only update counter with the pattern "(000 articles)" in section title.
- All attributes of articles get from corresponding categories.
- The bot will automatically update the summary table if there are summary table marks.
This list is tailored to the English-language Wikipedia. There is also a list of one thousand articles considered vital to Wikipedias of all languages, as well as Vital Article lists tailored to different Wikipedia languages accessible via the languages sidebar.
Articles should not be added or removed from this list without a consensus on the talk page. For more information on this list and the process for adding or removing articles, please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.
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- "Vital Wikipedia Articles" | 2019-07-25 | 436 Upvotes 77 Comments
๐ Bacon's Cipher
Bacon's cipher or the Baconian cipher is a method of steganographic message encoding devised by Francis Bacon in 1605. A message is concealed in the presentation of text, rather than its content. Bacon cipher is categorized as both a substitution cipher (in plain code) and a concealment cipher (using the two typefaces).
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- "Bacon's Cipher" | 2023-07-11 | 80 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ Half Cent Coin
The half cent was the smallest denomination of United States coin ever minted. It was first minted in 1793 and last minted in 1857. It was minted with five different designs.
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- "Half Cent Coin" | 2025-02-10 | 26 Upvotes 6 Comments